Fewer AP classes, suspended more often: Black students still face racism in suburbs

BRIGHTON, N.Y. – Elijah Goldberg thought he could handle precalculus in 11th grade. His guidance counselor, he said, did not.

"It seemed like they were scared I would fail a class and it would make the district look bad," he said. "It was a big argument – I had to get my mom involved."

Frustrated, he instead took the class in the evening at a community college near his home outside Rochester, New York, and earned an A minus. He took the transcript back to his high school in the wealthy suburb of Brighton and showed it to the staff – proof he had been correct about his own ability.

"I felt like the administrators didn’t believe in me – I was definitely discouraged from taking AP (advanced placement) classes and getting ahead," said Goldberg, who graduated in 2016. "In my AP classes, there weren’t a lot of us, and we definitely weren’t encouraged. It was more just 'Get through, and don’t fail.' "

For black students across the USA – the "us" he referenced – Goldberg's experience is a common one.

Even in generally high-performing suburban school districts, students of color, particularly black students, say they face pervasive prejudice when it comes to access to advanced coursework, academic achievement and discipline. Figures from the most recent federal Civil Rights Data Collection show disparities in every part of the country.

In the Phoenix-area school district of Paradise Valley, white students are about twice as likely as black and Hispanic students to be enrolled in at least one AP class.

In Collier County, Florida, black students are 2.7 times more likely to be suspended.

How the suburbs started out so white

The prejudice stems, in part, from the history of the suburbs. Black families, in particular, were expressly excluded from the midcentury suburban housing boom – the primary source of those towns' wealth advantages.

"Racism is often perpetuated by the very nice, very kind people who decided to move out to (the suburbs) and didn’t think to ask why there’s no black people out there," said L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy, a professor at New York University who studies racial inequality in suburban schools.

Suburban schools often are largely white. Students of color are still in the minority, even as schools diversify — and that's the way it's been for decades. "The reason we haven’t been paying attention to it is that, in general, these schools have been performing well, so people don’t perceive it as a problem," Lewis-McCoy said.

Rochester and Monroe County are archetypes of the hollowed-out urban core surrounded by wealthy, mostly white suburbs. The Rochester City School District is, by some measures, the worst in the nation. Students of color who instead attend one of the county's 17 suburban school districts mostly consider themselves lucky.

Kennedy Jackson lives in Rochester but attends school in the wealthy east side suburb of Penfield through an inter-district transfer program. She said many of her white classmates believe they can use the N-word liberally as long as they have an "N-card," meaning they have a black friend who supposedly gave them permission to do so.

"I should feel comfortable going to school, and I don’t always, because people say that word," she said.

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Can students claim an exception to use the "N word" freely?
Ketsia Rodriguez, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

The high school administration, students of color said, did not address the problem when they brought it up.

Bethany Beru, a student at Rush-Henrietta Senior High School, said she was shocked to hear the N-word used in the classroom by a white teacher last year. She went to her counselor's office and documented the incident, in which the teacher said it while explaining to students that they should not say it.

No one followed up with her, she said. Weeks passed. Eventually, she confronted the teacher herself and said his use of the N-word was uncalled for.

"He was just like, 'Oh, um, I didn’t mean to hurt you, but you know where I'm coming from, right?' " Beru said. "At the end of the day he still didn’t understand, and I can't argue with somebody who didn’t understand. That was the worst situation I've ever had with a teacher."

The district has since looked into the incident and takes Beru's experience very seriously, spokesman Travis Anderson said.

'Watching me to see if I fail'

The problem is not only a matter of academics and discipline. Students of color reported feeling alienated, overscrutinized and underestimated.

Leah Stewart, a 12th-grader at Greece Olympia High School outside Rochester, is part of an uncomfortable sort of club at school. She calls it "the five smart black girls." Earning admission was an exhausting ordeal, yet she doesn't enjoy being a member.

It began in eighth grade, when Stewart had to push back against a counselor who wouldn't enroll her in an advanced course. She's had the same experience in high school, even with a track record of academic success.

"I tried to take AP physics, and my counselor pretty much laughed at me," Stewart said. "He was pretty much just like, 'Oh, you have a lot on your plate.' He wouldn’t sign off on it for, like, a really long time."

She's one of five black students, all girls, taking AP classes at the high school, she said. Membership in that select sorority entitles them to dubious recognition: They are often asked to present to the school board, for instance, as if they were representative of a larger group. Teachers of advanced courses refer to "the five black girls" and seem to mean well.

Other times, the label is an invitation for trouble. Take, for instance, the time a substitute teacher left a note saying the black girls had been talking too loudly after they finished their work. Their regular teacher read it aloud in class.

"Sometimes, you feel like a super-big outcast," Stewart said.

"Some people say, 'Oh, I don’t see color,' " Stewart said, but sometimes it's OK for students and teachers to acknowledge race. "It's just how you do it."

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Kidest Yigezu pleaded to be in advanced classes as she had transferred in with good grades.
Ketsia Rodriguez, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

Will Barrett, an 11th-grader in the Rochester suburb of Fairport, recounted one instance when a student said black people come from the jungle. Black people commit the vast majority of crimes, the white student continued, so the country would be better off without them.

A teacher overheard the comment, Barrett said. Instead of intervening, he said, the teacher put the responsibility for talking with the white student on Barrett, saying simply that Barrett "shouldn't stand for that."

"I often feel like there’s 1,000 eyes on me while I’m taking a test. It creates a lot of stress and anxiety," he said. "Honestly, sometimes I feel I’m invisible, but at the same time, everyone’s watching me to see if I fail."

Under Trump, it's up to school districts

Many districts respond by having faculty attend professional development classes meant to counter institutional racism and implicit bias. They institute restorative-justice practices to take the place of more punitive actions such as out-of-school suspensions. Their efforts are complicated by a shortage of teachers of color, particularly in the Northeast and outside major urban areas.

"To our suburban colleagues, I would say: It requires focused attention and a decision to figure out what may be going on and how to effectively address it," said Cecilia Golden, deputy superintendent of Rochester City Schools.

President Barack Obama's administration put in requirements that school districts act to reduce disproportionate suspension statistics for minority students. Districts were to accomplish that largely through closer analysis of data and by boosting other academic and social supports for those students.

President Donald Trump's administration rolled that back, arguing that any restrictions on discipline could make schools more dangerous or make it more difficult to prevent mass shootings.

Discipline decisions often were based on a student's race under the Obama-era rules, DeVos said. "Statistics became more important than the safety of students and teachers," she said in a statement announcing the change.

Other interventions are student-led. Hundreds of Rochester-area students attend ROC 2 Change summits three times a year to discuss racism and prejudice with their peers at dozens of other districts.

Marah Ali, a sophomore at West Irondequoit, bottom right, leads a discussion on race at her table of West Irondequoit schoolmates during the Individual School Work Session at the ROC 2 Change student summit on race.(Photo: SHAWN DOWD/ROCHESTER DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE)

"It was very powerful, because you see so many people who look like you," Barrett said after a recent summit. "Just seeing a lot of black excellence and a willingness to speak out about topics – it makes me want to do more in Fairport."

A minority of black students in suburban schools test themselves with the most challenging courses their schools offer.

The year after Elijah Goldberg took pre-calculus at Monroe Community College, he was placed into AP calculus at his high school. It was hard – as he knew it would be.

"It was so much more interesting and fun when I was challenged," he said. "But I could handle it."

Correction: A previous version of this story conflated the wealthy Phoenix suburb of Paradise Valley with the Paradise Valley Unified School District. In the school district, 29 percent of students receive free and reduced-price lunch.